Well, technicaly still was in ascent phase so probably doing some 400 km/h… what is interesting is how unnoticeably but steadily the clouds go down and down as the airplane climbs; since they were in a hurry to clear the storms, probably their climb rate was above the standard of 1800 feet per minute.

There is option that alien will visit us before we will know that they exist, because if they would have some technology of FTL travel, they woulld be here before we could get their electromagnetic signals send in the early level of their civilization.

My favorite plot twist is that FTL communication is universal once you discover it. Like bulding a radio receiver and suddenly discovering there’s a whole unseen world out there beyond your tiny island in the middle of nowhere.

So you build your first ansible (I love this name) and presto! you find out 10 million civilizations all over the universe, talking to each other as they go. Why travel at relativistic speed when you can talk instantly to them? Surely protocols would be in place so new receivers can broadcast proficently and locate themselves in a universal coordinates system to learn whether there’s someone in their vicinity. Also would be a sort of universal encyclopaedia and more protocols so new civlizations don’t drown themselves into excess information. And maybe a universal effort to develop FTL travel… but not very enthusiastically since some civlizations already have been engaged in centuries long journeys of war as their invasion fleets travel towards each toher. But they keep talking so who knows? Maybe the ships will become goodwiil ambassadros when they reach each other!

It looked rather destructive instead of salvagey. Not the thing I would use to deorbit satelites. Some debris could have been created and then it would hit another satelite and it would create chain reaction, and no internet and tv and telephone since then.

A Hohmann Transfer is an orbital maneuver that transfers a satellite or spacecraft from one circular orbit to another. It was invented by a German scientist in 1925 and is the most fuel efficient way to get from one circular orbit to another circular orbit. Because the Hohmann Transfer is the most fuel efficient way to move a spacecraft, it is a fairly slow process and is used mostly for transferring spacecraft shorter distances.

A Hohmann Transfer is half of an elliptical orbit (2) that touches the circular orbit the spacecraft is currently on (1) and the circular orbit the spacecraft will end up on (3). It takes two accelerations to get the original orbit to the destination orbit. To move from a smaller circular orbit to a larger one the spacecraft will need to speed up to get onto the elliptical orbit at the perigee and speed up again at the apogee to get onto the new circular orbit. To move from a larger circluar orbit to a smaller one, the processes are reversed.

Well, let’s imagine the plate is not alone, but attached as a part of a large satellite. The debris would go into the satellite body and the whole question would be wether the harpoon and tether allow to tow the satellite.

For smaller debris the same test satellite had a net and it also worked as intended.

So true. Last night I dreamed again but this time it made a little more sense. Was a kidn of videogame where the player belongs to a evil organization which attacks the good guys with a handheld weapon. The weapon was a black box you hold with both hands, then it fired two thin black lines which focused on limbs or the body of the enemy. And then they did nothing, apparently (WTF?). Eventually the thing ended with the bad guys (and the player) riding a train, randomly attacking enemies (or NPCs?) at stations with the black line things and a increasing feeling of the mission or whatever it was being bound to end in a disaster.

Probably the blakc box thing was mind controlled and so the black lasers/lines just aimed at what the mind chose to, but seriously… they did NOTHING. That’s the most WTF part of all the dream…